Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
References
All Topics
Languages and Linguistics
Morphology

Adjectives exist, adjectivisers do not: a bicategorial typology

Profile image of Phoevos PanagiotidisPhoevos Panagiotidis

2020, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics

https://doi.org/10.5334/GJGL.940
visibility

…

description

28 pages

link

1 file

Abstract

This paper examines how adjectives are derived within a featural system comprising only two categories. It argues that adjectivisers, a heads, do not exist, leaving the repertory of categorisers with two members only: verbalisers, v heads, and nominalisers, n heads. We proceed to argue that the adjective category is possibly universal insofar as it involves prima facie dual categorisation: adjectives obtain when a root or an already categorised element combines with a complex categorial structure, one that involves both a verbaliser and nominaliser. This proposal is supported by grammar-internal evidence (viz. the external modification of adjectives by adverbs and the nominal character of their internal structure) and by broader typological facts (the distribution of which follows from our analysis). Several consequences and predictions are beneficially derived.

Related papers

A position on classifying and qualifying adjectives revisited
Jadwiga Linde-Usiekniewicz

2016

This work is sequel to my paper on the controversy concerning the appropriate syntactic and semantic account of the distinction between classificatory and qualifying adjectives in Polish (Linde-Usiekniewicz 2013). It develops the lines of inquiry suggested therein, mainly the claim that differences between the pre-nominal and post-nominal attributive syntax can only be adequately explained when the lexical meaning of the head noun and the attribute are taken into account – specifically, in the case of relational adjectives, the actual semantic relation between the head noun and the adjective. The interplay between the lexical meanings and the meanings imposed by syntactic order is presented within Encoding Grammar, a multi-layered framework devised in Linde-Usiekniewicz (2012). In particular, postposing of lexically qualitative adjectives and preposing of relational adjectives is presented as a type of coercion, in which the meaning imposed by syntax overrides the lexical meaning of...

View PDFchevron_right
Denominal adjectives as mixed categories
Irina Nikolaeva

Word Structure, 2017

Many languages have morphological devices to turn a noun into an adjective. Often this morphology is genuinely derivational in that it adds semantic content such as ‘similar-to-N’ (similitudinal), ‘located-on/in’ (locational) and so on. In other cases the denominal adjective expresses no more than a pragmatically determined relationship, as in preposition-al phrase (see the synonymous preposition phrase), often called ‘relational adjectives’. In many languages relational adjectives are noun-to-adjective transpositions, that is, adjectival forms (‘representations’) of nominals. In some languages and constructions they retain some of the noun-related properties of the base. For example, the base can be modified by an attribute as though it were still a syntactically represented noun, giving rise to what we will call ‘syntagmatic category mixing’. We also find instances of ‘paradigmatic category mixing’ in which the derived adjectival form retains some of the inflectional morphology (c...

View PDFchevron_right
THE SUBCATEGORIZATION OF ADJECTIVES IN ENGLISH. FROM PRINCIPLES TO APPLICATION
Anjum Saleemi

Studia Linguistica, 1987

View PDFchevron_right
When can a language have adjectives? An Implicational Universal (Hb 1999, Pb 2000)
Jan Rijkhoff

Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes. Berlin, 2000

View PDFchevron_right
Guglielmo Cinque, ,The Syntax of Adjectives: A Comparative Study (2010) MIT Press,Cambridge, MA 202 pp., Price: $70 (∼€50) (hardcover), $35 (∼€25) (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-262-01416-8 (hardcover), 978-0-262-51426-2 (paperback)
Franc Marušič

2011

The Syntax of Adjectives: A Comparative Study, Guglielmo Cinque. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2010)., 202 pp., Price: $70 (s50) (hardcover), $35 (s25) (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-262-01416-8 (hardcover), 978-0-262-51426-2 (paperback)

View PDFchevron_right
Adjectives, Number and Interfaces: Why Languages Vary (review)
Elizabeth Cowper

Language, 2006

Reviewed by ELIZABETH COWPER, University of Toronto Denis Bouchard has, for the past twenty years, been someone we can count on to demand that linguistic theory live up to the standards it sets for itself. In particular, he is most eloquent and convincing when he points out the frequent lack of independent motivation for theoretical constructs such as empty categories (Bouchard 1984), theta-roles (Bouchard 1995), and now in his latest offering, uninterpretable features, meta-features, phonologically null functional heads, and syntactic movement. Adjectives, number and interfaces: Why languages vary is a major work with two main stated goals. The first is descriptive: to provide a comprehensive account of adjectival modification in French, and to show the consequences it has for crosslinguistic variation in adjectival modification. The second is theoretical: to explain why languages vary. There is a third goal, not stated at the outset, which B achieves with at least as much success as the other two: to explore what a properly minimalist theory of language must look like, taking seriously Noam Chomsky's idea that legibility at the interfaces is the only condition required, beyond virtual conceptual necessity. The book includes eight chapters, plus an appendix. Chs. 2 and 3 present B's account of adjectival modification in French, along with a fairly extensive comparison of French with English. He briefly discusses where Celtic languages, Walloon, and Romanian fit into the picture he develops. Chs. 4 and 5 explore some specific consequences of his proposals for the syntax and semantics of nominal phrases, primarily in French, but with considerable discussion of English as well. Chs. 1, 6, 7, and 8 constitute essentially a theoretical manifesto and could almost have been published as a separate book. In fact, such a separation might have made the material more accessible and interesting to a larger audience. The book is 458 pages long, and at times is extremely heavy going. It suffers from what appears to have been a complete lack of editorial attention, both as to the organization of information and as to infelicities of style, bad glossing of data, lexical malapropisms, spelling mistakes, typographical errors, and mislabeling of chapters. Frequently, the infelicities of style impede comprehension; a reader who knows French will at times find this knowledge useful in deciphering the text. Despite these problems, however, the material in the book is well worth the effort of reading it. I first discuss the theoretical proposals, and then turn to the discussion of adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. I recommend that readers begin with Chs. 6-8, then go back to Chs. 1-5. Ch. 6 includes an excellent discussion of theoretical simplicity and parsimony. B distinguishes three sorts of simplicity: formal simplicity, functional simplicity, and what he calls general simplicity. Formal simplicity is achieved by reducing the number of tools available to the theory, so as to eliminate redundancy from linguistic descriptions. Pursuing formal simplicity can frequently uncover broader generalizations and can also result in a cleaner account of the data, but, says B, it does not necessarily reduce the expressive power of the theory. 'Eliminating redundancy is secondary in the sense that it does not really constrain rule formulation: it just removes one formulation which is equal in power with another that is maintained. Therefore, there is no reduction in the power of the theory, in what could be formulated in the theory, because the formulation that is maintained can express what was expressed by the formulation that has been removed' (327-28). He takes the elimination of D-structure as an example of formal simplification. Since all information encoded in D-structure can be recovered from other levels of representation, the elimination of D-structure has no effect on the expressive power of the theory. However, elimination of redundant components can sometimes lead to a more explanatory account. The elimination of phrase structure rules in favor of X-bar theory and lexical projection

View PDFchevron_right
On the edge: nominalizations from evaluative adjectives
Rafael Marín

2012

In this paper we examine the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by analyzing the properties of nouns derived from adjectives. We will discuss the event structure underlying them and argue that, although it is commonly assumed that deadjectival nouns denote qualities (wisdom, beauty) or states (sadness, perplexity), there is a group of deadjectival nominalizations (imprudence, cruelty) that refer to occurrences of events (Beauseroy, 2009). We show that such occurrential nominalizations are possible only when derived from evaluative adjectives. This is due, we argue, to the fact that such adjectives can be predicated of events in addition to the sentient individual (Stowell, 1991). Finally, we furthermore show that the existence of a structure of origin with the relevant properties does not guarantee the existence of the derived category, leaving what seem to be gaps in the universe of possible derivations.

View PDFchevron_right
The Redundancy of Lexical Categories
Andrew Spencer

The Redundancy of Lexical Categories, 1998

"In this paper I argue that the familiar lexical category labels, N, V, A, P or equivalently the features such as [±N, ±V] are redundant in a theory which admits a level of argument structure. I modify Zwart’s (1992) conception of a-structure by arguing that major class members always include a ‘referential role’: <R> for nouns, <E> (for ‘eventuality’) for verbs and <A> (‘attribute’) for adjectives. <A> is coindexed with the <R> role of the modificand. A-structures are canonically associated with sets of F(unctional) features, but ‘mixed’ a-structure types may be associated with ‘mixed’ F-features, without the need to postulate ‘mixed’ lexical categories. Categorial information can thus be read off a-structure representations without the need for purely syntactic category features. I first develop a (constructional) semantics for compound nouns (N N) in which the a-structure of the modifying noun receives a new r(eferential) role <A> with demotion of the original <R> role. The new <A> role is coindexed with the <R> role of the modificand and the attributive relationship interpreted as some pragmatically characterized relationship, ρ. Relational adjectives are given a similar argument structure representation with the same semantic interpretation, but in their lexical representation. I sketch an analysis of participles in which the <E> role of the verb is demoted by introduction of an <A> role. Deverbal nominals are obtained by demoting the <E> role and adding an <R> role (essentially naming an event). By assuming that a-structure is articulated we can account for the typologically observed patterns of argument realization in nominalizations."

View PDFchevron_right
The Semantic Classification of Adjectives. A view from Syntax.
Guglielmo Cinque

The need to distinguish two syntactic sources for adnominal adjectives (a direct modification and a relative clause one), with the associated interpretive properties, turns out to have certain implications for the semantic classification of adjectives. We will see that it provides evidence for the existence of a class of truly privative adjectives, and for the conclusion that subsective adjectives of the tall/big type and of the skillful/good type cannot be reduced for the direct modification class to (context-sensitive) intersectivity. Furthermore, the available syntactic evidence appears to converge with Partee’s more recent position that the principal divide is between predicative and non predicative adjectives, which correspond in the adnominal case to the relative clause and direct modification sources, respectively.

View PDFchevron_right
Baker, Mark C. Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives
Phoevos Panagiotidis

Studies in Language, 2005

View PDFchevron_right

References (97)

  1. Acquaviva, Paolo. 2009. Roots and lexicality in distributed morphology. In Alexandra Galani, Daniel Redinger & Norman Yeo (eds.), York-Essex Morphology Meeting 5: Special Issue of York Working Papers in Linguistics 2. 1-21. York: University of York. http://ling. auf.net/lingbuzz/000654.
  2. Acquaviva, Paolo. 2014a. Distributing roots: Listemes across components in distrib- uted morphology. Theoretical Linguistics 40. 277-286. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ tl-2014-0011
  3. Acquaviva, Paolo. 2014b. The roots of nominality, the nominality of roots. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syn- tax (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics), 33-56. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665266.003.0003
  4. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2001. Functional structure in nominals: nominalization and ergativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.42
  5. Alexiadou, Artemis & Florian Schäfer. 2010. On the syntax of episodic vs. dispositional -er nominals. In Artemis Alexiadou & Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 9-38. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110245875.9
  6. Alexiadou, Artemis, Gianina Iordăchioaia & Florian Schäfer. 2011. Scaling the variation in romance and germanic nominalizations. In Antonia Petronella Sleeman & Harry Perridon (eds.), The noun phrase in romance and germanic: structure, variation, and change (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 171), 25-40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.171.04ale
  7. Anderson, John M. 1997. A notional theory of syntactic categories (Cambridge stud- ies in linguistics 82). Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511519734
  8. Arad, Maya. 2003. Locality constraints on the interpretation of roots: The case of hebrew denominal verbs. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21. 737-778. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1023/A:1025533719905
  9. Arad, Maya. 2005. Roots and patterns hebrew morpho-syntax. Dordrecht: Springer.
  10. Arsenijević, B., G. Boleda Torrent, B. Gehrke & L. McNally. 2010. Ethnic adjectives are proper adjectives. In T. Grinsell, A. Baker, J. Thomas & R. Baglini J. Keane (eds.), Pro- ceedings of CLS 46. 1-15. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.
  11. Baker, Mark C. 2003. Lexical categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives (Cambridge studies in linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511615047
  12. Beck, David. 1999. The typology of parts of speech systems: the markedness of adjectives. Toronto: University of Toronto dissertation.
  13. Bhat, D. N. S. 1994. The adjectival category: criteria for differentiation and identification (Studies in language Companion 24). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. OCLC: 246793960. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.24
  14. Bloom, Paul. 2000. How children learn the meaning of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3577.001.0001
  15. Borer, Hagit. 2009-04. Roots and categories. 19th Colloquium on Generative Grammar.
  16. Borer, Hagit. 2014. The category of roots. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics), 112-148. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780199665266.003.0006
  17. Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to kinds across language. Natural Language Semantics 6. 339-405. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008324218506
  18. Chierchia, Gennaro & Raymond Turner. 1988. Semantics and property theory. Linguistics and Philosophy 11. 261-302. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00632905
  19. Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on nominalization. In Roderick Jacobs & Peter Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar, 184-221. Waltham, MA: Ginn & Company.
  20. Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken hale: a life in language, 1-52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  21. Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33-49. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.12.003
  22. Collins, Chris & Edward Stabler. 2016. A formalization of minimalist syntax. Syntax 19(1). 43-78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/synt.12117
  23. Corbett, Greville G. 1987. The morphology/syntax interface: Evidence from possessive adjectives in Slavonic. Language 63(2). 299-345. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/415658
  24. Corver, Norbert. 2014. Adverbial -ly. Ms. Utrecht University.
  25. Creissels, Denis. 2006. Syntaxe générale. une introduction typologique, 1. Paris: Lavoisier.
  26. Creissels, Denis. 2014. The 'new adjectives' of tswana. In Raffaele Simone & Francesca Masini (eds.), Current issues in linguistic theory 332. 75-94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.05cre
  27. Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic categories and grammatical relations: the cognitive organiza- tion of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  28. Darteni, Silvia. 2017. Italian parasynthetic verbs -Argument Structure. Paris: University of Paris VIII dissertation.
  29. De Belder, Marijke. 2011. Roots and affixes: eliminating lexical categories from syntax. Utrecht: LOT.
  30. Déchaine, Rose-Marie. 1993. Predicates across categories. Amherst: University of Massachusetts dissertation.
  31. Dixon, Robert M. W. 2004. Adjective classes in typological perspective. In Robert M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.), Adjective classes: a cross-linguistic typology (Explorations in Linguistic Typology 1), 1-49. Oxford University Press.
  32. Embick, David & Alec Marantz. 2008. Architecture and blocking. Linguistic Inquiry 39. 1-53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/ling.2008.39.1.1
  33. Emonds, Joseph E. 1985. A unified theory of syntactic categories (Studies in generative grammar 19). Dordrecht: Foris. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110808513
  34. Fábregas, Antonio & Rafael Marín. 2017. Problems and questions in derived adjectives. Word Structure 10(1). 1-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/word.2017.0098
  35. Feferman, Solomon. 2015. A simpler property theory for natural language semantics. Unpublished Ms. Stanford University.
  36. Ferrari-Bridgers, Franca. 2008. A unified syntactic analysis of italian and luganda nouns. In Cécile deCat & Katherine Demuth (eds.), The bantu-romance connection: A com- parative investigation of verbal agreement, DPs, and information structure 131. 239-258. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/catalog/la.131.13fer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.131.13fer
  37. Fradin, Bernard. 2017. The multifaceted nature of denominal adjectives. Word Structure 10(1). 27-53. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/word.2017.0099
  38. Francez, Itamar & Andrew Koontz-Garboden. 2015-07-01. Semantically impossible adjec- tives. Paper presented at Roots IV. New York: NYU.
  39. Fu, Jingqi, Tom Roeper & Hagit Borer. 2001. The VP within process nominals: evidence from adverbs and the VP anaphor 'do-so'. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19. 549-582. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010654105760
  40. Geach, Peter. 1962. Reference and generality. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  41. Givón, Talmy. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/z.17
  42. Grimshaw, Jane B. 1991. Extended projection. Unpublished ms. Brandeis University.
  43. Haider, Hubert. 2001. Heads and selection. In Norbert Corver & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Semi-lexical categories, 67-96. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  44. Hale, Kenneth L. & Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Kenneth L. Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: essays in honor of sylvain bromberger, 53-109. MIT Press.
  45. Hale, Kenneth L. & Samuel Jay Keyser. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument struc- ture (Linguistic inquiry monographs 39). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.7551/mitpress/5634.001.0001
  46. Harley, Heidi. 2013. External arguments and the mirror principle: On the distinctness of voice and v. Lingua 125. 34-57. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.09.010
  47. Harley, Heidi. 2014. On the identity of roots. Theoretical Linguistics 40(3). 225-276. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2014-0024
  48. Harley, Heidi & Rolf Noyer. 1998. Mixed nominalizations, short verb movement and object shift in english. In Pius N. Tamanji, Heidi Harley, Rolf Noyer & Kiyomi Kusumoto (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 28, 1-15. Amherst: GLSA.
  49. Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. Word classes and parts of speech. In International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, 16538-16545. Amsterdam: Elsevier. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/02959-4
  50. Hu, Xuhui. 2018. Property concepts, possession, and adjectives. Unpublished ms. PKU, Beijing.
  51. Ilkhanipour, Negin. 2013. On the semantics of little v. Paper presented at Little v Workshop. Leiden.
  52. Iwasaki, Yasufumi. 1999. Three subcategories of nouns in Japanese. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois dissertation.
  53. Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. X syntax: a study of phrase structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  54. Kamp, Hans. 1975. Two theories about adjectives. In Edward Keenan (ed.), Formal semantics of natural language, 123-155. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511897696.011
  55. Kihm, Alain. 2008. Noun Class, Gender, and the Lexicon-Syntax-Morphology Interfaces: a Comparative Study of Niger-Congo and Romance Languages. In Guglielmo Cinque & Richard S. Kayne (eds.), The oxford handbook of comparative syntax, 459-512. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195136517.013.0011
  56. Kim, Min-Joo. 2002. Does korean have adjectives? In Tania Ionin, Heejeong Ko & Andrew Nevins (eds.), Proceedings of HUMIT 2001 (MIT Working papers in linguistics 43), 71-89. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  57. Kramer, Ruth. 2009-06. Definite Markers, Phi-Features and Agreement: A Morphosyntactic Investigation of the Amharic DP. Santa Cruz: University of California dissertation.
  58. Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Johan Rooryck & Laurie Zaring (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109-137. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8617-7_5
  59. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987a. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  60. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987b. Theoretical prerequisites. In Ronald W. Langacker (ed.), Composition (Foundations of cognitive grammar) 1. 448-480. Stanford: Stanford Uni- versity Press.
  61. Larson, Richard K. 1999. Semantics of adjectival modification. LOT Winter School. Utrecht: LOT. http://semlab5.sbs.sunysb.edu/~rlarson/LOT%2899%29/Contents.htmld/index. html. Larson, Richard K. 2014. On shell structure (Routledge leading linguists #19). New York: Routledge.
  62. Larson, Richard K. & Gabriel Segal. 1995. Knowledge of meaning: an introduction to semantic the- ory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/4076.001.0001
  63. Lowenstamm, Jean. 2008. On n, √, and types of nouns. In Jutta M. Hartmann, Veronika Hegedüs & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Sounds of silence: empty elements in syntax and pho- nology (North Holland Linguistic Series, Linguistic Variations), 107-144. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  64. Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 4. 201-225.
  65. Marantz, Alec. 2000. Words. Unpublished ms. NYU.
  66. Marantz, Alec. 2006. Phases and words. Unpublished ms. NYU.
  67. Marušič, Franc, Andrew Nevins & William Badecker. 2008. Experimental approaches to the study of grammar: Agreement and gender resolution in Slovenian. Paper presented at The 2008 CUNY conference. New York.
  68. Merchant, Jason. 2015. How much context is enough? Two cases of spanconditioned stem allomorphy. Linguistic Inquiry 46. 273-303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/ LING_a_00182
  69. Mitrović, Moreno. 2018. First-phase semantics. Paper presented at A0: The Lexical Status of Adjectives. Bled, Bled Institute.
  70. Mitrović, Moreno & Phoevos Panagiotidis. 2018. The categorial anatomy of adjectives. Ms. University of Cyprus & Bled Institute. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003887.
  71. Miyagawa, Shigeru. 1987. Lexical categories in Japanese. Lingua 73. 29-51. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(87)90013-1
  72. Moulton, Keir. 2004. External arguments and gerunds. Toronto Working Papers in Linguis- tics 22. 121-136.
  73. Nevins, Andrew & N. Myler. 2014. A brown-eyed girl. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 18. 243-257.
  74. Nikolaeva, Irina & Andrew Spencer. 2010. Nouns as adjectives and adjectives as nouns. Unpublished ms. SOAS & University of Essex.
  75. Ouhalla, Jamal. 1991. Functional categories and parametric variation (Theoretical linguis- tics). London: Routledge.
  76. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2003. Empty nouns. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21. 381-432. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023384924981
  77. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2010. Non-argumental mixed projections. Syntax 13. 165-182. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2009.00134.x
  78. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2011. Categorial features and categorizers. The Linguistic Review 28. 325-346. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/tlir.2011.010
  79. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2014. A minimalist approach to roots. In Peter Kosta, Steven Franks, Lilia Schürcks & Teodora Radeva-Bork (eds.), Minimalism and beyond: Radical- izing the interfaces, 287-303. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  80. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2015. Categorial features: a generative theory of word class categories (Cambridge studies in linguistics 145). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139811927
  81. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2016. Rethinking adjectives. Paper presented at 37th Annual Meeting of the Department of Linguistics. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
  82. Panagiotidis, Phoevos. 2018. (Grammatical) gender troubles and the gender of pro- nouns. In Eric Mathieu & Gita Zareikar (eds.), Gender, noun classification, and deter- mination, 186-199. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780198828105.003.0009
  83. Pesetsky, David & Ester Torrego. 2004. Tense, case and the nature of syntactic catego- ries. In Jacqueline Guéron & Jacqueline Lecarme (eds.), The syntax of time, 495-537. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  84. Pires, Acrisio. 2006. The minimalist syntax of defective domains: gerunds and infinitives (Linguistik aktuell/Linguistics today v. 98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1075/la.98
  85. Prasada, Sandeep. 2008. Aspects of a fully psychological theory of sortal representation. Unpublished ms. New York: Hunter College, CUNY.
  86. Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Introducing arguments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262162548.001.0001
  87. Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: a first-phase syntax (Cambridge studies in linguistics 116). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511486319
  88. Roberts, I. G. 2010. Agreement and head movement: Clitics, incorporation, and defective goals (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014304.001.0001
  89. Ross, John. 1973. Nouniness. In Osamu Fujimura (ed.), Three dimensions of linguistic the- ory, 137-258. Tokyo: TEC Co. Ltd.
  90. Schütze, Carson. 2001. Semantically empty lexical heads as last resorts. In Norbert Corver & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Semi-lexical categories, 127-187. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  91. Shimada, Junri. 2007. Head movement, binding theory, and phrase structure. Unpub- lished ms. MIT.
  92. Stassen, Leon. 2013. Predicative adjectives. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online, Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://wals.info/chapter/118.
  93. Stowell, Tim. 1981. Origins of Phrase Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Struckmeier, Volker & Joost Kremers. 2014. On the properties of attributive phrases in Germanic (and beyond). In Petra Sleeman, Freek Van de Velde & Harry Perridon (eds.), Adjectives in Germanic and Romance, 149-169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.212.06str
  94. Uriagereka, Juan. 1999. Warps: some thoughts on categorization. Theoretical Linguistics 25. 31-73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.1999.25.1.31
  95. van Riemsdijk, Henk. 1998. Categorial feature magnetism: the endocentricity and distri- bution of projections. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 2. 1-48. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1023/A:1009763305416
  96. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1980. Lingua mentalis: the semantics of natural language. Syndey: Academic Press.
  97. Wiltschko, Martina. 2014. The universal structure of categories: towards a formal typology (Cambridge studies in linguistics 142). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139833899

Related papers

Between nouns and adjectives: A constructional view
Irina Nikolaeva

Lingua, 2008

Tungus proprietives, regularly derived from nouns by affixation, demonstrate a mixed behaviour. As adnominal modifiers, they have the full syntactic and morphological distribution of an adjective. Yet, the base noun retains some nominal properties: it can head its own syntactic phrase, control agreement on its modifier, trigger various anaphoric processes, pluralize, and take derivational affixes. These forms present a problem for the traditional view of syntactic categories, as they have the morphosyntactic properties of more than one part of speech. They are also important for the syntax/morphology interface, because the word structure and the phrase structure do not match: although the base noun selects modifiers as if it were an independent phrasal head, it is not an independent word in morphology. The paper shows that syntactic affixation analyses cannot adequately capture the Tungus data. Instead, I propose a constructional analysis based on the idea that relationships among classes of words are expressed in the lexicon by means of cross-cutting hierarchical types, where more specific types inherit information from more general types. The idiosyncratic behaviour of proprietives is lexically specified by the crossclassification of head values. Categorial information is inherited from adjectives and determines the external distribution of the phrase. At the same time, proprietives inherit the underlying noun's semantics (referentiality) and selectional properties. This analysis raises further questions about the nature of the traditional syntactic labels such as nouns or adjectives, namely, whether we are dealing with a new category type in each case of mixed categories.

View PDFchevron_right
Adjectives - an introduction
Patricia Cabredo Hofherr

Adjectives. Formal analyses in syntax and semantics. John Benjamins., 2010

View PDFchevron_right
Adjectives as a lexical category - a story of striving for extension
Boban Arsenijevic

A°: The Lexical Status of Adjectives, 2022

I argue that prepositions and adjectives form one lexical category (labeled for convenience PAd), such that prepositions are its light members in the way light verbs (be, become, cause) are members of the verbal and taxonomic nouns (place, person, event) of the nominal category. While the opposition between nouns and verbs is based on an ontological restriction, modelled as the value of the classifier feature, PAd is characterized by the inability to establish reference, i.e. by an unvalued classifier feature. Surface asymmetries between traditional adjectives and prepositions are discussed and either refuted or explained away in terms of the proposed differences in the richness of lexical semantics and the underlying structural differences.

View PDFchevron_right
The nominalization of adjectives in French: From morphological conversion to categorial mismatch
Peter Lauwers

Folia Linguistica, 2008

This paper focuses on non-anaphoric nominalized adjectives denoting abstract concepts, such as le vrai 'the truth', du sublime 'the sublime', and suggests that the standard analysis in terms of morphological conversion does not stand up to scrutiny. Abstract nominalized adjectives, for instance, cannot be considered "nonsyntactic", cannot be integrated without problems into existing patterns of derivation, and exhibit strong restrictions in terms of modification and determination. To solve the categorial mismatch of nominalized adjectives an alternative analysis from the perspective of Construction Grammar is proposed. More specifically, it is argued that, in accordance with the override principle (Michaelis 2003), the adjective conforms to the features of the construction with which it is combined. The fact that the construction in question inherits many of its specifications from the Determination construction, which is typically nominal, accounts for the hybrid nature of phrases headed by nominalized adjectives.

View PDFchevron_right
Evaluative adjectives at the light of their nominalizations
Rafael Marín
View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Sociology
  • Dual (grammatical number)

    • Cited by

    Adverbial -s as last resort
    Norbert Corver

    Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2021

    This article examines the grammatical behavior of Dutch adverbs featuring so-called adverbial -s. This will be done on the basis of three questions: Firstly, what is the grammatical nature of adverbial -s? Secondly, in which structural configurations does it appear? Thirdly, what does adverbial -s tell us about the existence of adverbs as a separate part of speech? The article provides the following three answers to these questions: Firstly, adverbial -s is an affixal manifestation of the categorizing heads n and a (so-called -s-Support). Secondly, n and a externalize as -s when the raised root that forms an amalgam with the categorizing head is silent or a bound root. Thirdly, “adverbs” featuring adverbial -s are nominal, adjectival or adpositional expressions with an articulated syntactic structure. Some of these syntactic structures correspond to the so-called construct state. In short, linguistic expressions featuring adverbial -s do not support the idea that adverbs form a sepa...

    View PDFchevron_right
    580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved